IOSH Managing Safely

Having recently been nominated the LRC health and safety representative, I found myself going to meetings and not having a clue about the subjects discussed. That isn't to say I didn't know anything about health and safety, I have a rudimentary idea, know it is important and common sense often tells me if something is a hazard. However, I wanted to know more and be in a better place to be able to represent my department and help contribute to the overall College strategy, so when the opportunity came up to attend the IOSH Managing Safely course, I was only too glad to sign up.

It was taught over 4 consecutive days, which is very intense for any course and on the 4th day there was even an exam to sit. I would have preferred a day a week or a short evening course, however I'd signed up so I had to get on with it.

The course covers:

·         Introducing Managing Safely

·         Assessing risks

·         Controlling risks

·         Understanding your responsibilities

·         Identifying hazards

·         Investigating accidents and incidents

·         Measuring performance

·         Protecting our environment

All are interlinked especially when you come to do risk assessments, which is the final project on the course. It also proved timely from the point of view that the LRC risk assessments need updating and having done this course; I am more confident in doing the risk assessments and understand more what I’m looking for and why. These are ongoing currently, I haven’t had time to do them all yet for this year. One of the most positive things for me to come out of the course was being able to understand the reports I was reading that come to me as part of the Health and Safety Committee meeting papers. I know that if I hadn’t done this course most of it would have had to be explained to me. I would definitely recommend doing this course if you have health and safety responsibilities and believe me when I say - you all do, the buck might not stop with you but everyone is responsible for health and safety.

ALT-C 2012

I attended my first Association of Learning Technologists (ALT) Conference in September, primarily because I was co-presenting a short paper with my former line manager, Claire. Although the Conference was over 3 days, I only attended the day I was presenting, which was Wednesday 12th September.

The things that struck me immediately was that it seemed a bigger conference than i'd attended before (I don't know if it was) and that the format of it was very different to what I was used to. 

The format is what I want to explore because unlike other conferences I've attended with traditional keynote speeches and hour long workshops, this conference is multifaceted regarding the 'workshops'. This is in inverted commas as it needs an explanation. Where you would normally have an hour long conference workshop, ALT-C has a variety of things:

• PechaKucha sessions of no more than 10 mins and 9 slides
• Short papers (20 mins)
• Symposia (60 mins)
• Workshops (60 mins)
• Demonstrations (30 mins)
• Hybrids - combinations of the above (60 mins)

The sessions were in 1 - 1.20 hour blocks, so if you were attending the PechaKuchas or short paper sessions, you got a variety of presentations. This I found liberating because it meant that I was hearing about many different things in a short space of time, keeping me interested and alert.

My presentation was part of an Institutional Mainstreaming theme and in this session there were 4 presentations (inclusive of mine). I got to hear about:

• Open University's final year projects that use a peer open forum to help students choose their topic
• mainstreaming e-learning and innovation in higher education teaching
• and possibly the most inspiring talk I have ever attended, about the use of lecture capture technology to deliver classes for students of the American University in Cairo (whose main campus is in Cairo's main square) during the Arab Spring

I especially like this as it means that even though you are presenting, you are not missing out on hearing about other people's experiences. I felt at the ARLG Conference I went to in June, I was missing out on very interesting sessions, as I was presenting when they were on. The short papers at ALT-C meant I presented for part of the session and then it was someone else's turn. Granted, I had no choice over what I was hearing about in this session but I felt I was learning something, rather than only sharing my experience.

The next 'workshop' I attended was a PechaKucha session. Claire and I went along to this, in support of my colleague Richard, who was presenting. Here (including Richard) there were 5 presentations, which gave a succinct overview of each topic. The PechaKucha sessions didn't have any overarching broad theme like the short papers, (other than their use of e-learninig technologies). They again provided an interesting and diverse range of presentations that kept the delegates engaged.

The last session I attended had the broad theme of Changing Learners. The presentations here were about using digital sorytelling for reflective practice and using social media as an audience response system. Again I got a brief introduction to the subjects. I think that when you are at a conference this is all you need. You can't take in all the information you are receiving, so for me I would rather take away lots of small introductory ideas and then follow up by contacting presenters, than hear something very in depth but then forgetting most if it due to an information overload. I appreciate that other people may want the in depth information and that option is available through the other 'workshops'. This variety is why I think that the multifaceted option of workshops offered at ALT-C is a fantastic idea.

Marketing my LRC

Over the last few months, things in the LRC haven't gone very well. We feel like we are not valued at all by the senior management and despite efforts to convince that we are a very valuable service, we have taken a hit. So what to do to futureproof?

Marketing is my answer.

And that is why I have Ned Potter's Library Marketing Toolkit on my desk at work with post its sticking out all over and why I chose to go on the Marketing Libraries: strategic and creative communications for information professionals course.

The first session How do you like your eggs in the morning? provided a fascinating insight into how the University of Sunderland library market their service. They have created a 7 step toolkit to create marketing plans:

1. Identify strategic direction
2. Do SWOT analysis
3. Profile customer segments
4. Match offers to segments
5. Transform offers into benefits
6. Translate benefits into messages
7. Plan communication campaign

I think that I already do part of this unconsciously and that I would benefit more by writing and recording it as they do at Sunderland.  I especially like the trees they used for feedback, which were visible and fun. You can see more about their marketing campaigns on their Pinterest page.

I have been told by my manager that he will get us (him, our e-Learning Manager and myself) a monthly slot on the senior management team meeting agenda, where we can promote our services and shout out about what we do. I would like to use the 7 step toolkit to start planning which services to promote. I therefore expect the handouts from this session to end up on my desk alongside the Library Marketing Toolkit book.

The second session was about Social Media Marketing for Libraries and this session reinforced what I have read in the Library Marketing Toolkit. Currently I have a Twitter and Facebook account for the LRC and that is quite enough. They are not updated as regularly as they should be and I wish to address that. I have started with Twitter by tidying it up and tweeting more, I now need to turn my attention to the Facebook page, to see what needs sorting and to start to use that more effectively. I know that there are College Flickr and You Tube accounts too and hope that I can make use of those in my social media campaigns.

The third session was about being consistent and creative with branding. I have spent the summer trying to do this with the current marketing materials that we have and the few new ones that we had to do. I am pleased with the overall effect of what has been produced, it builds on the excellent LRC Guide that was produced last year with bite size information and everything now has a College logo on, so that we are aligned and a part of the College brand. This I think may go some way to help build the reputation and value that we desire.

The final session of the day was about marketing in small specialised libraries (in this case York Minster Library) and looked at the library being a place to belong not just visit. Although this session was a very different type of marketing to what I would expect in an academic library, it was still useful, as well as being very interesting and excellently presented by Antonio Jiminez-Milian. What I got out of this session was that you can promote your values and what you want to be associated with by using status updates. To do this you retweet or like updates from bodies, institutions etc that share your values. So I will be reviewing my Twitter account again (and looking into this when I review the Facebook account) and looking at following people who share the same values as the College and LRC want to promote. 

I hope my efforts are not in vain and that indeed the LRC does build its reputation up and start to feel like we are valued and are an important part of the College.

MEG Lib Annual Meeting

This is my round up of the Mixed Economy Libraries group (MEG Lib) annual meeting. This was the first time I had attended this and I was presenting a paper with my manager. Sadly, my manager couldn't go, so I ended up having to do the presentation on my own, which was another first for me - or so I thought.

On the train to Birmingham, where the meeting was, I was trying not to worry too much about doing the presentation by myself. I quite suddenly had an epiphany and realised that actually it wasn't the first time I'd presented on my own. I, of course, had presented at University as part of my course and not only that but I was much more familiar with the subject I was talking about at this meeting, than anything I had done at University. Phew! Glad I got that sorted. So I continued my journey to Birmingham quite happy in the knowledge that I could do this.

The room that we were using was a lecture theatre and it was quite difficult to hear the people at the back, when I was at the front presenting. It was also a large room for the number of people attending. In my presentation, I had to try to remember not to touch the whiteboard as by doing so it moved the PowerPoint to the next slide, I have never encountered this before and it took me awhile to stop accidentally moving the presentation forward when I didn't want to. This is something I need to bear in mind when I present again. Apart from that little issue, I thought my presentation went well and again it provided much discussion.

Moving onto the other presentations:

EBSCO had a promotion slot talking about their new pricing structures for Colleges, based on JISC banding. This was of particular interest to me as I am tasked with increasing e-resources at work and these look like they will meet curriculum need. I will be looking into this soon.

Northampton College were presenting about their information skills programme and what I have taken from this is:

• To pitch the ideas at the people paid to promote good practice
• Self evaluate skills both at the beginning and end of sessions, to see where students have started and where they think they are afterwards
• Put together a comprehensive programme but make all parts able to stand alone. This way students can dip in and out

Bradford College talked about their new building which they will move into in a couple of years time. It seems to be a cross between somewhere like I work and City of Bristol College, which I blogged about after the ARLG Conference. You can find that at http://traceytotty.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/arlg-conference-2012.html. Sue Caporn from City of Bristol College, also did a session here about her library.

Croydon College presented about their new library and how that was working. Points to note for me were:

• They went fully self service
• Customer service skills are more important than library skills, when recruiting new staff
• Roving helps with behaviour management
• Text messages are used to inform students about reservations
• They have a room check board system (like in toilets) to help manage self contained areas

I have gained a lot of knowledge from attending this meeting and have new ideas about how to move the service forward. Some can be implemented immediately e.g. check board and others will require funding and planning e.g. self service

York Minster Library and Search Engine, National Railway Museum Visits

For our summer workforce development, I arranged a visit to York to see the Minster library and Search Engine, the National Railway Museum's (NRM) library.

We started off at York Minster Library, which is very old and looks like something from Harry Potter. They have floor to ceiling shelving around the rooms with the small books at the top and the large books at the bottom. This is because of the shelving design, which has the taller shelving at the bottom and the smallest shelving at the top. The cataloguing therefore is rather unique, the bays are numbered, then the shelves are numbered and the catalogue number is finally completed by how far the book is along the shelf. Easy!

We were treated to the delights of 'The Cage', which is a caged off area where the oldest books are. We got to see a book from the 16th century which contained 'all the knowledge in the world'. It started with the biblical stories and went through political history up until the then present time. It was fabulously illustrated and had been annotated by a previous owner. We discovered that as paper was originally very expensive, people would use every bit they had to write things on (including shopping lists). From 'The Cage', we went up the obligatory spiral staircase to the balcony area, where we saw some elaborately bound books. My favourite one was like a small handbag.

The second visit was to Search Engine at the NRM. Now being a railwayman's daughter and a bit of an anorak, this was tremendously exciting for me. We started off by being shown around the public area, which is light, bright and modern. Then we were taken down into the bowels of the NRM, to see the library archive area. Wow! 

They have a huge collection of blueprints of engineering designs. There was the original (signed by Stanier) copy of the Duchess of Hamilton blueprints laid out on table. We moved on to the book collection, with rolling stacks. That's rolling stacks, a library thing, not to be confused with the rolling stock, a railway thing. Although I suppose libraries can have a rolling stock, if they want but it would have nothing to do with trains. Search Engine's archive has allsorts of ephemera too such as a collection of railway tickets and we saw Stephenson's written design for the Rocket. From here, we entered the seriously cool (that's refering to the temperature) poster collection and original art collection. Many of these were used for promotion purposes and because of the materials used, have to be kept somewhat refrigerated. We were all very jealous that their climate control system works far better than the one we have at work.

We saw 2 very different libraries and both are seriously different to our FE library. They were incredibly interesting to go to and it was interesting to hear what kind of challenges they face, particularly regarding the preservation of each collection. The Minster was cool and their stained glass windows have had to have dark blinds put over them to keep the sunlight out. The NRM being a much more modern building has a state of the art climate control system, where we started off in a cool area and end up going into a very cold area. Any of these would be welcome at work, where our Office temperature can be quite tropical.

ARLG Conference 2012

This post is going to look at the workshops I attended as a delegate.

Writing Right for Twitter by Meg Westbury. 

Meg was looking at how companies / institutions can engage and connect with their users rather than just putting information on Twitter. Her top tips are:

• Know your audience
• Clearly state the idea
• Make the Tweets frequent and varied
• Well thought out
• Use short, descriptive and action words
• Use headline formula
• Write them knowing they might be shared i.e. don't use all 140 characters, leave room for comment

The workshop built in time for the delegates to rewrite example Tweets using Meg's tips. This was very popular and illustrated the need to think about Tweets before writing them. I will be trying to use these tips when Tweeting both at work and for my own account.

How to Make Yourself Almost Irreplacable by Steve Lee. 

Steve started the session with asking us to work in groups and write down what we dislike about supermarkets. The comparison being that as it is a customer facing business many of our dislikes of the supermarkets transfers to a library too.

His suggestion for improvement is to get out of the library. Go and talk to the tutors and find out what they want and need from the library, then see how we can meet those needs.

Top tips are:

• Send new book and journal information to staff. This may take time initially but then the process can be automated, saving library staff time whilst still giving the tutors what they need
• Respond in a timely fashion to any issues
• Trial new ideas, if they don't work you can go back to your original way of doing things
• Do surgeries in departments, you may need to be proactive to start with but it breaks down barriers and eventually work of mouth leads to people approaching you for advice and help. It was noted that roving skills are useful when doing surgeries.

At work there is a desire for the library staff to eventually become partly based in the departments. I think that if I can trial surgeries in the new academic year, this will help to make that transition.

LRCs and Flexible Learning Environments by Sue Caporn and Vicki Bowd. 

This was one of the most amazing ideas I've seen. Their library at City of Bristol College has no boundaries, basically if you are in a communal area, you are in the library. They have technology for people to borrow (all are catalogued on their LMS), the classrooms don't have PCs, they borrow laptops from the library and all the library staff have an ePICT qualification to ensure that they can help with any queries. They are hoping that eventually everything will be self issue.

This kind of idea, whilst innovative, would have to be a concept that is bought into throughout the College and might not work in buildings that have not been designed to cope with this strategy. I very much like the idea but somehow can't see it working where I work, although we do have equipment for loan and are looking to extend this.

Putting a Face to a Name by Leanne Young.

This looked at using technology with overseas distance learners. Leanne told us that currently distance learning is not done by VLE and that to help students she has been trialling free resources, as she doesn't have a budget to buy anything. She has used AnyMeeting to hold sessions with students. This requires a lot of preparation which she has done via Google docs to collate the information she has gathered in order to set up the meetings. She also makes heavy use of Tumblr, so that information is easily available to the students and in one place.

The scheme although quite small at the moment is very popular, with students being able to see Leanne and know that she is their to help them. She made the point that in some countries the librarian is not expected to be there to help students and part of what she wanted to do, was to get the message out that it is her job to help them and that they should feel free to contact her whenever they needed to. 

Although I don't work with distance learners per se, there are students who are not traditional learners and I think that some of Leanne's ideas could work with them. I look forward to trying some of them out.

I have totally enjoyed the Conference and have so many new ideas to think about. Some of them can be implemented straight away and others will take some planning. I hope that all will benefit and enhance the library experience. 

Presenting at ARLG Conference 2012

I attended the inaugural ARLG Conference last week in Newcastle, both as a presenter and a delegate. In this post, I am going to write about workshops I presented. I will write a second post about what I attended as a delegate.

I was presenting a workshop with my manager and e-Learning Manager, about student experience, expectations and how we meet them. As we are relatively local to Newcastle (an hour's drive away) we were asked if we would present the session twice. 

The first workshop we did was in the Workshop 1 slot, so early in the Conference after the first keynote speech. I was quite nervous about it, as circumstances at work had meant we had prepared the workshop but not had time to practice. We had each practiced our own bits individually but it was not the preparation we had wanted it to be. 

At first the attendees were relatively quiet and I couldn't decide if this was because they were tired from travelling, unsure of interacting more or just plain bored. Once the session got into full flow and they started doing the tasks we'd set, they became more animated.

The second workshop we did was in the Workshop 3 slot, mid - late morning of the second day. It was held in a different room to the first one and had a stage / podium for the presenters. This I found daunting and slightly uncomfortable.

My style of presenting is that I physically point to things that are displaying on the electronic whiteboard e.g. particular things in my Powerpoint or where the login button is for a database etc. In this room the whiteboard was high on the wall and unreachable, so I had to modify my style by describing which part of my slide I was talking about. Also as my physical position was static, I felt I was hidden behind the PC and desk and when asked questions from the left hand side of the room (as I looked at it) felt as though I was peering out from behind the PC. It doesn't help that i'm not very tall. 

Whilst the stage made the presenter easier to see for the audience, it made me notice how much attention is focussed on the presenters. The elevated status of the stage compared to the floor level definitely draws attention. I feel much more comfortable at floor level where, although you are centre of attention as presenter, you don't feel as noticeable.

The attendees at this session were straight away more interactive than in the first session, I think because they were more comfortable with the dynamics of the Conference by this point. This put me more at ease on the stage. I did have a chance to get in amongst the audience during the tasks and this helped to break down any remaining barriers. This session I felt went better than the first one, as it had more contributions from the attendees.

In the end both sessions were successful with good contributions and discussions from the attendees. They were though very different due to the timing and the rooms.